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Predatory' former officer used relative position of power to abuse victims, court told.

: Trial of ex-Sgt Timothy Lively

Date - 21st February 2019
By - Nick Hudson - Police Oracle

 

A former officer who left policing in 1988 after an internal disciplinary hearing for alleged sexual impropriety has gone on trial accused of using his position to abuse a string of “damaged” children and young adults in an historical case dating back four decades.

Many of alleged offences are said to have been committed at a children’s home where ex-Sergeant Timothy Lively, then a cadet, started volunteering when himself still a teenager, a court was told.

Jurors at Warwickshire Crown Court heard one of the 11 alleged victims of sexual assault was herself an 18-year-old police cadet “whom he threw himself on, leaving her weeping and terrified”.

The former Warwickshire officer, now a “successful businessman”, denies 26 separate offences against children as young as 10, said to have happened in a children's home, a police station custody cell and during youth club camping trips in the 1970s and 1980s.

Prosecutors have alleged that "predatory" Mr Lively groomed his victims, many of whom were from broken homes, and made "great use of his relative position of power" as an officer.

Opening the case on Wednesday, prosecuting barrister Rosina Cottage QC, said: "This case involves a series of serious sex offences against children and young adults, committed some 40 years ago, between 1978 and 1985.

"The youngest complainant was 10 or 11 years old and there are 11 complainants in total."

Miss Cottage said: "He took many of the complainants on rides in his police car and to his house to show them his police equipment.

"There are instances where, if the child was in trouble with the police, Mr Lively would threaten them, saying that they would be locked up if they refused to submit to abuse."

Some of the children reported the abuse at the time, but were either not believed by staff, or, as is alleged in one case where Mr Lively was present when police came to speak to the victim, the claim was later withdrawn.

Described as a "successful businessman" Mr Lively, now 60, is facing 21 counts of indecent assault, three charges of buggery, one of rape and another of indecency with a child.

The former police sergeant, and one-time detective constable, of Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, has pleaded not guilty to all the offences.

Miss Cottage said: "The Crown alleges that during the time he served as a police cadet and (later) as a police officer, Mr Lively sexually abused the 11 complainants.

"The abuse in respect to the complainants took place across three locations; a children's home, a youth club and, in relation to one complainant, in the cells at a police station.

"Ten of those assaulted were all children, ranging from 10 to 11 into their teens.

"One was an 18-year-old police cadet who was young and naive, whom he threw himself on, leaving her weeping and terrified."

Miss Cottage said the alleged abuse carried on even after Mr Lively became a police officer, when he "continued to volunteer" at the home, "often attending in the evening after work and taking the resident children on trips".

She added that his role in a linked youth club also "enabled Mr Lively to have frequent and unrestrained access to vulnerable young people".

Miss Cottage told jurors they would hear evidence of abuse claims from those at the children's home, of both boys and girls.

Reading one account, the Crown QC said: "He would come into the room at night, get in bed with her, hold her arms and have sex with her."

She added: "He would come to her room at least once every week, and sometimes twice a week."

A male resident, then a teenager, said Mr Lively "started messing about with me", while he was at the children's home, and that he took to drink "because I knew what was going to happen to me".

Another victim, under 16 at the time, was abused in a police station cell on several occasions, jurors heard.

Miss Cottage said: "There are 11 complainants, some of whom do not know each other, all disclosing the same pattern of abuse at the hands of the same man."

She added that many of the complainants were "damaged" and had "led troubled lives", urging jurors to put emotion to one side and consider each allegation separately.

She added: "The issue is not whether they consented, but whether or not the incidents happened at all.

"Because the defendant says nothing happened at all sexually with any of these people.

"So your job will be whether or not any of these allegations, which the prosecution say happened, did happen, and to be sure they happened."

The trial continues.

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At the moment they are alleged offences and we have not heard the evidence or seen the witnesses. Everyone is innocent until proved otherwise, however, should the cases be proved then, rightly, he deserves a substantial sentence.